The present invention relates to a beamformer for CW Doppler ultrasound that has been reduced to a single application specific integrated circuit. The reduction of a CW Beamformer to an ASIC chip provides considerable savings in space and power consumption in the use of a medial ultrasound device.
The present invention relates to a beamformer for CW Doppler ultrasound that has been reduced to a single application specific integrated circuit. The reduction of a CW Beamformer to an ASIC chip provides considerable savings in space and power consumption in the use of a medial ultrasound device.
The present invention relates to a continuous wave Doppler beam former application specific integrated circuit (CW-ASIC). The beam former element may be either a receive beam former, or a transmit beam former.
More specifically, the CW-ASIC is a receive beam former comprising a local oscillator generator having a programmable delay function and a programmable frequency function and capable of producing a LO I signal and a LO Q signal (LO I/Q pair), said LO I/Q pair being multiplied with an analog receive signal to produce a complex base band output. The CW-ASIC may further comprise a plurality of local oscillator generators. The receive beam former further comprising a sum circuit for the summation of the base band signals produced by said plurality of local oscillator generators, said sum circuit further comprising a filter to produce a base band beam formed signal.
The CW-ASIC transmit beam former comprises a plurality of transmit circuits, wave form generation circuits and delay circuits to generate an acoustic transmit beam
Another embodiment of the present invention provides for a continuous wave Doppler beam former application specific integrated circuit for use in a diagnostic medical ultrasound system, the continuous wave Doppler beam former application specific integrated circuit comprising a plurality of channels forming a CW analog receive path wherein each channel is connected with a digital beam former, the plurality of channels are mixed down in quadrature to base band using a mixer and a local oscillator (LO) generated in quadrature, the outputs of said mixer are summed and wall/high pass filtered to provide a beam formed base band signal; and a sub circuit which provides a digital serial control function to interface to a real time control bus providing per channel enable/disable of said mixer and said local oscillator generator, and local oscillator delay as well as global local oscillator frequency select, said digital control also having an external delay enable signal to start said LO generators and synchronize all the internal LO delays.
A third embodiment of the present invention comprises an ultrasound system application specific integrated circuit (US-ASIC) having at least one beam former, a transducer controller, one or more digital signal processor(s), and a plurality of input/output channels for linking to at least one memory means, a power control system, a transducer and a user interface.